


The Ginger Menace

by Saraste



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Braids, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Fluff, Gigolas Week 3, Khuzdul enderments, Kitten!, Legolas (and Gimli) have a soft spot for tiny defenseless things, M/M, Married Life, Post War of the Ring, some Sansukh influence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 03:24:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5359310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gimli and Legolas make their way back to their homes and family. One evening they find something small, malnourished and sopping wet in a gutter. Legolas will come to regret his good will.</p><p>(And more braiding, this is set in the same 'verse as my other gigolas week fics.)</p><p>Day 5: Pets or Animals</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

During their indulgent and unhurried trek back to the North and their homelands they find a kitten.

  


It is a scrawny, half-starved thing, shivering in the gutter outside a human settlement. And were it not for the good hearing of Elves, they would not have even known it was there. But Legolas heard it it's cry; a tiny, defeated mewl that tucked at something inside of him.

  


Gimli is, at first, against taking it with them. Mostly due to reasons of practicality. And for all of five minutes. Legolas does not use puppy-eyes at him, Gimli simply needs to take one proper look at the soggy ginger ball of fur cupped in Legola's slender-fingered palms for the kitty to shiver its way right into his heart and settle there. It _is_ too pitiful to leave there, to die of exposure or hunger. Gimli will forever be the protector of suffering tiny things. And he has the idle thought that his nephew might like a cat for a pet.

  


He is so very _wrong_.

  


The kitten, which curls between them in their bed for the night, situated in a rather shabby inn, burrows its way into Gimli's heart. Well, technically it burrows to purr and snuffle inside his beard sometime during the night and Gimli is rather touched to find it there when he wakes up the following morning. He hears his Elf chuckle.

  


Gimli stops, fingers carded through soft fur, and looks at his husband on the other side of the narrow bed. The fluffy fur is so soft at his fingertips, after the careful cleaning up of the grime on the kitten's fur that Gimli and Legolas had done before bedding for the night. Gimli still bore some claw marks from the effort, even if the wee feline had seemed to be grateful for being cleaned up, at least once when it had been over. After it had filled it's belly on bits of meat from their supper it had promptly fallen asleep. But it was awake now.

  


”And your point is?” Gimli asks. The kitten takes hold of his hand and attacks his fingers with it's tiny paws and teeth. The sting of it is nothing to him. The kitty is fierce in in it's attack and seems to have a strong spirit. It is a wonder it's so alive when it had looked half-dead just the evening before.

  


Legolas leans closer, a grin on his face.”You simply looked so adorable, meleth-nin.”

  


They share a kiss but Legolas soon pulls away, gasping sharply. He does not do anything so undignified as growl in irritation but there is a grimace on his face which speaks of his discomfort. The kitten has caught hold of one of his wedding braids, one of the pair with Gimli's hair threaded through it, and it attacking it with a ferocious intent.

  


There is an almost horrified look in Legolas' eyes as he looks Gimli while the kitten pulls on that particular braid. Like someone but his husband taking hold of it, be it only a kitten, is somehow a threat to his marriage. Or that he thinks, based on what Gimli has shared of what hair and beards mean to dwarrows, that Gimli would be upset over it. The Dwarf cannot tell.

  


Gimli cannot hold back a snicker at the Elf's predicament. ”Here, let me untangle him,” he offers, carefully taking hold of the scrawny fluff-ball and tried to salvage Legolas' braid from its paws. (Neither of them has the knowledge to ascertain if it is a tom or a molly.)

  


The braid comes through the ordeal only a little worse for the wear, few strands yanked out of the pattern. Gimli sets down the loudly protesting kitten, which mewls piteously until it starts to scramble up the Dwarf's back instead, soon disappearing into his mass of red hair.

  


”Thank you, Gimli,” Legolas tells him and eyes the kitten a little wearily. His long fingers are fussily running over the dishevelled braid, a crease between his eyes. He has been so proud over his wedding braids and so very careful to not get them become disheveled. For Legolas, as for Gimli, they _are_ a tangible sign of the bond between them, the promises they have made to each other, of the big and small intimacies shared by the two of them.

  


“Here,” Gimli, reaches over, “let me re-braid that for you, as is only proper.” His fingers are nimble and quick, even if they linger a little as he re-creates the pattern of what once was his courting braid and is now his spouse braid in Legolas' bright Elven hair.

  


Legolas carefully feels the braid and his eyes brighten when he feels the neat weaves with his fingers. “Thank you, meleth,” he breathes before a new kiss.

  


The kitten attempts to nest in Gimli's neck hair.

  


  


  


 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gimli and Legolas, on their way back to their homes, are caught in a downpour. It's just silly fluff, nothing more. 
> 
> Part two of the ginger kitty saga. 
> 
> Gigolas week day 6. rain and/or ocean.

 

She is _not_ happy. She is wet and _cold._ She should not be wet because she has a soft and fuzzy nest. Technically it is the two-legged creature's fur. Red like her own. The pale one might be deficient in some way is it does not have as much fur as the other. Neither of them do not possess the ability to understand a single thing when she tries to communicate with them.

  


She is a big cat, she is, and she is being very very _slow_ when getting her point across. But they do not _do_ anything for her. They do not understand her. So, with a wet sigh, she resorts to baby talk, like the red one and the tall pale one were _her_ kittens.

  


She _mewls_.

  


*

  


The half-grown cat lets out an affronted mewl from the depths of Gimli's waterlogged beard. The Dwarf only hears it because the feline is so close to him for the heavens have opened upon them in an unending deluge of autumn rain. The loud rain has pelted over them for hours, drenching them to the bone.

  


He pats at Legolas' back to make him halt. They are riding double on Arod, and it is both nice and a little frustrating now that they have come clean of their intentions and are, as a married couple, well within their rights to act on their impulses regarding one another.

  


Legolas leans around, damp braids hanging on each side of his face despite the cover offered by the hood of his Lorien cloak. “What is it, meleth?”

  


“The cat is wet.”

  


Even if the wet gloom prevents Gimli from seeing the Elf's face, he knows that Legolas is amused when he says: “Of course. The _cat_ is wet.”

  


Gimli secretly thinks that he could douse his husband sopping wet and it would not make a difference. He himself is not partial to the weather. Not that he would ever admit to such a thing.

  


“I'll have you know I'm a hardy Dwarrow who can stand through any sort of weather. I laugh in the face of a hail storm. A little water is nothing!”

  


“I do think that you protest a little too much, Gimli.”

  


“Look, the kitten is mewling it's head off and clawing at my neck. My beard is soaked through and I'd rather not be this wet if it can be helped. We would be making camp as soon as we found shelter anyway.”

  


And hour later (through which the cats mewls rise in pitch and affront) they are sitting in a dry cave, have a merry fire going and both are stripping out of their clothes to let them dry out. They're changing them for hypothetically dry ones from their packs. There may be some quick kisses and a grope or two.

  


Maybe.

  


The kitten is purring happily near the fire, curled up in a shirt of Gimli's it stole for itself to snuggle upon once he's opened his pack. It had imprinted on Gimli and preferred him to Legolas. Well, it preferred his _beard_ to Legolas' lack of beard.

  


“Now, this is better,” Gimli sighs contentedly as he sits down to start their evening meal. Their supplies are almost wetted through and they've needed to roll out their sleeping rolls onto the earth floor to dry them at least a little from where water has seeped in.

  


Gimli chops some roots into the pot to accompany some strips of dried meat already in the water and seasons it before fixing it over the fire. He is glad to have gotten to fill his spices before they had left.

  


Once the Dwarf is done, Legolas draws him next to him where he sits with his back against the cave wall and they just lounge there for a moment in companionable silence.

  


“Are you jealous?” Gimli asks as his eyes stray onto the ginger ball snuggled into his shirt.

  


“Of the kitten?”

  


“Yes.”

  


“No.”

  


Legolas proves Gimli why as they wait for the their stew to cook, and they are suitably warmed up and content when they get to their meal. Even when it's ends up being a little burnt. Only the cat cares.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cats actually communicate with people as they do with kittens or when they do as kittens with their own mama. Because we do not understand their ways of mostly non-verbal communication. Fun fact, adult cats usually _never_ meow at each other the way they do to humans. Basically they just dumb it down for us and then we mewl back at them and it's all nonsense to them.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be more with this kitty.


End file.
